Braised fennel

I hope you are all having a relaxing Sunday! My day has started very chilled, the sun is shining, I'm slowly making coffee and some pretzel rolls are waiting to be eaten. I will head out soon, as the weather really seems to be lovely, but first I wanted to share a dish with you that I made yesterday.

This braised fennel that I pretty much improvised made such a lovely side to our Saturday night dinner. We had buttery potato mash and a veggie Schnitzel with it. It was basically comfort food, but kind of with a touch of spring. The liquid of the fennel made a perfect sauce to moisten the dish a bit, and actually the liquid is probably my favourite bit. I think that this braised fennel would go with many kind of dishes, even just with a salad. The cooking only needs some patience, as I think I cooked it for a couple of hours, just slow baking in the oven. The preparation itself is not much work, though.

Braised fennel

Ingredients

1 fennel bulb

100 ml vegetable stock

1 tsp salt

Sprinkle of ground black pepper

100 ml white wine

3 garlic cloves

100 g grated cheese (I used a Cheddar and Red Leicester mix)

Method

Cut the fennel into four slices and remove the hard stalk. Cut the green bits on the top into finer slices. Put the thin slices on the bottom of an oven dish and then the larger fennel bits on the top.

Pour the vegetable stock in and season with salt and pepper. Cover the dish with a foil and slow bake at about 180 C for one hour. Have a look sometimes, how the fennel is doing and turn the pieces around midway of the cooking.

Chop the garlic finely. Once the fennel is already fairly soft, pour the wine in, and cook some more. At this stage I removed the foil, and also added the garlic.

After a while, add the cheese and bake until it has melted.

Enjoy!

Your VegHog

Red kidney bean and tomato salad

Let's start this weekend by posting a healthy recipe, as I probably will cook and bake something naughty later today. This vegan salad could be an idea for your lunch box next week. It's quite filling thanks to the beans and it tastes just as vibrant as it looks. This is quite a good type of salad I find and should make these more often.

Ingredients

1 can red kidney beans

200 g tomatoes

1 red romano pepper

1 small salad onion

Gem lettuce

Pumpkin seeds

Olive oil

Salt

Ground black pepper

Method

Chop the tomatoes and peppers into smallish cubes.

Slice the salad onion finely and cut the gem lettuce into slices.

Mix all the ingredients in a bowl and dress with olive oil. You can also add vinegar of your choice.

Season with salt and ground black pepper.

Enjoy!

Your VegHog

Cauliflower nuggets

April is here and so is nugget time! I'm feeling pretty upbeat at the moment, because even though I get home fairly late from work, now it's actually still bright at that time. I'm also off to Copenhagen in a couple of days and going to spend Easter there, so prepare for a few Danish posts! Additionally to all of this goodness I bought some lovely tulips, my favourite flowers, to cheer me up.

A while ago I made broccoli nuggets and thought that I would try a similar recipe, but use cauliflower instead of broccoli. These were quite nice small bites and surprisingly easy to make in the oven as lower fat versions, yet still crispy. Here are my ingredients and method for making these cauliflower nuggets.

Ingredients for about 15 cauliflower nuggets

1 cauliflower

1 shallot

2 garlic cloves

1 tbsp olive oil

½ tsp smoked paprika

½ tsp salt

¼ tsp ground black pepper

150 g mature cheddar

2 eggs

50 g spelt flour

50 + 50 g breadcrumbs

Method

Cut the cauliflower into florets and steam them until they are done.

Chop the shallot and garlic finely and cook them in olive oil until soft.

Mix the shallots with the cauliflower and when mixing crush the soft cauliflower into smaller pieces.

Season the mix with smoked paprika, salt and ground black pepper.

Grate the cheese and add it, half of the breadcrumbs and the egg yolks to the mix.

Place the spelt flour, egg whites and breadcrumbs on separate plates.

Shape nuggets from the cauliflower mix and dip them into each plate of spelt flour, egg whites and breadcrumbs.

Place them on baking paper on a baking tray and bake in the oven at 200C for about 20 minutes or until they are golden brown with a crispy surfaces.

Enjoy with a nice dip, salad, bread or veggie burgers, anything really that you desire.

Your VegHog

Garlic and basil rolls

You already got a sneak preview to these rolls posing on the side of my Alphabet soup, and now the recipe for them will be revealed. I got the recipe from Valio's webpage here and it's developed by Riikka from Vatsasekaisin Kilinkolin, a Finnish food blog. I'm posting below my own only slightly altered version. 

The dough may seem too soft for shaping rolls, but if you're only able to roll it at that texture on a floured surface, the rolls become wonderfully soft and fluffy. First I was skeptical and wanted to add more flour, but I'm glad I didn't. However I used a slightly different rolling technique to the original. Mine might have not been as pretty, but they were so tasty that I don't care!

This recipe makes about 14 rolls.

Ingredients

250 ml milk

1 tbsp dry yeast

1 + 1 egg

1 tbsp honey

½ tsp salt

5 dl wheat flour

50 g + 50 g garlic butter

Bunch of fresh basil

Method

Mix the yeast into lukewarm milk. Add one of the eggs, honey, salt and the half of the flour and mix. Add the rest of the flour and keep kneading for about 20 minutes by hand or 10 minutes with a machine. It is a long time, but worth it. Add 50 g of the melted garlic butter towards the end of the kneading. Cover the dough with a tea towel and let it rise for about one hour.

Place the dough on a floured surface and roll it into a sheet of about 35 x 35 cm. Spread the other half of the garlic butter (not melted, only soft so it's better spreadable) on the dough and sprinkle the chopped basil onto it. Roll the dough into a long firm log, swiss roll style, and cut roll sized pieces from it. Let these rise on a baking tray under a tea towel for about 30 minutes. 

Brush the rolls with a beaten egg and bake them at 220C for about 12 minutes or until the rolls are fully baked.

Enjoy with salads, soups, pasta dishes. They are at their best when fresh from the oven.

Your VegHog

Acorn squash salad

I think that this salad could well be served at Christmas. It's colourful, wholesome, comforting... the clue is in the mixture of warm and cold components: the squash, lentils and halloumi will be served warm and the salad leaves and pomegranate cold. Have a look below, how easy it is to compile.

Salad ingredients

1 acorn squash

1 tbsp olive oil for roasting the squash

½ cup green lentils

1 vegetable stock cube

250 g halloumi

1 tbsp vegetable oil for frying the halloumi

200 g mixed salad leaves

1 pomegranate

Dressing ingredients

1 tbsp pomegranate molasses

1 tbsp balsamic vinegar

4 tbsp olive oil

½ tsp thyme

½ tsp salt

½ tsp ground black pepper

Method

Cut the acorn squash into slices, basically rings, and remove the seeds. There's no need to peel the squash. Then brush the slices with olive oil and roast at 180C for about 30 minutes until they are fully roasted. The roasting time can vary depending on the thickness of the squash slices and the oven's performance.

Rinse the lentils and cook them in water with the vegetable stock cube until soft, yet with some bite. This takes about 20-30 minutes. After that drain them.

Cut the halloumi into cubes and fry them in hot vegetable oil until they are golden brown.

Wash the salad leaves and remove the pomegranate seeds.

During the roasting and cooking, the dressing can be made. Just mix all the ingredients together.

Then assemble the salad. Make either a nice presentation on individual plates, or place the components nicely into a salad bowl and drizzle the dressing on the top.

Your VegHog

Roasted cauliflower slices

For a long time now I've kept seeing lovely images of roasted cauliflower slices, and really wanted to try such a dish. Then I detected a recipe for Cauliflower cheese steaks in Erin Gleeson's The Forest Feast (p. 148-149) and was finally convinced to try. Last week I noticed that my favourite pasta cheese had returned to stock in my local supermarket after a long absence, and this was a great dish to use it on. Obviously I'll now be making loads of pasta again as well.

At some point in the future I will follow the recipe in The Forest Feast, as that looked absolutely amazing. Here is how I made my roasted cauliflower slices in the end, a bit more basic version.

1 cauliflower

2 tbsp olive oil

½ tsp sea salt

10 g vegetarian pasta cheese

Cut the cauliflower into thin slices and grate the cheese.

Roast the cauliflower slices at 180C for about 20 minutes.

Sprinkle the grated cheese on top of them and roast for further 5 minutes until the cheese has melted.

Serve as a side dish to roast dinners etc. These are so tasty that I would sometimes just have them as a snack on their own.

Your VegHog

Garlic knots

It has been raining and raining and raining... A severe weather warning is a good excuse to stay in and bake and cook! I'm lucky enough to do just that this week, only going to the grocery store is the unpleasant bit. Today I'm sticking to the basics, but very tasty basics at that matter!

These garlic knots are a great side to pasta dishes, soups, stews and salads. I got the idea for them in the beautiful cookbook The Forest Feast (p. 28-29) by Erin Gleeson. I think that this book is a great purchase because of the photos and artwork alone, but the recipes are mouth watering as well. All the ones I've tried so far, have also been quite simple, which is nice.

Here is how I made the garlic knots:

Spelt pizza dough (recipe here)

2 tbsp butter

2 garlic cloves

1 tsp parsley

Roll the pizza dough into a long thin rod and tie knots from the pieces of the rod.

Bake the knots in the oven at 200C for about 15-20 minutes.

Heat the butter and finely chopped garlic in a frying pan.

Turn the knots in the pan for a couple of minutes, sprinkle some parsley on them and serve.

Your VegHog

Chickpea couscous

Now it's really getting autumnal here: heavy rain, severe weather warnings, wind! Quite a few thunderstorms have also been here, which I like, but I don't associate them with autumn. For a Finn they are a summer thing. Finally I can fully enjoy walks in the park, wearing warm pullovers, drinking tea and cooking autumn dishes.

Today's dish is more a side dish, but you can eat it as a stand-alone dish as well. In that case you might want to consider adding more vegetables and spices to it. It's not really that autumnal, but there's more coming up. I combined chickpeas with harissa and couscous in a very simple dish.

Ingredients

1 cup dried chickpeas

½ cup couscous

2 shallots

2 garlic cloves

250 g tomatoes

1 tbsp olive oil

3 tbsp harissa

Salt

Ground black pepper

Pomegranate seeds

Method

Soak the chickpeas overnight in water. Then boil them heavily for a few minutes and then let boil more moderately for about one hour until they are cooked soft.

Chop the shallots and garlic finely and cook them in olive oil until soft. Chop the tomatoes and add them and the chickpeas to the pan.

Prepare the couscous by boiling ½ cup of water and then removing it from the heat. Add the couscous and leave under lid for 10 minutes. Then add the cooked couscous to the tomatoes and chickpeas and season with harissa, salt and pepper.

Decorate with pomegranate seeds for serving.

And that's it!

Your VegHog

Spicy beanballs

I make veggie Schnitzel and fritters quite often, but now I thought I'd make vegetable balls. Veggie burgers are everywhere these days (luckily!), but vegetable balls aren't so easy to get in shops or when eating out. So why not make some myself.

I thought of a quite simple recipe for these. Believe me, they are not so much work, as they are oven baked. Black beans seemed like a natural choice as the main ingredient, and then I went a bit frantic and added all kinds of vegetables and spices that I could find in my cupboards, not to forget about cheese. I think these could be made with many different veggies. I really want to make a bean and sweetcorn ones as well. I could also imagine that a potato mash base would be lovely here. This is a dish where you can get really creative!

Ingredients

3 shallots

3 garlic cloves

1 tbsp vegetable oil

1 red bell pepper

1 carrot

2 cans black beans

1 tsp ground cumin

1 tsp ground coriander

1 tsp paprika

1 tsp salt

½ tsp chilli flakes

½ tsp ground black pepper

150 g emmental

1 egg

1 cup breadcrumbs

Method

Chop the shallots and garlic finely and grate the bell pepper and carrot. The pepper can also be chopped finely.

Cook the shallots in vegetable oil until soft. Then add the garlic and bell pepper. Cook a while until you add the ground cumin, ground coriander and paprika.

Add the black beans and the grated carrot to the pan and let simmer slowly.

Once everything is cooked nicely, season with salt, chilli flakes and ground black pepper. And if needed, add more cumin, coriander or paprika. Let the mix cool.

Grate the emmental and add it to the bean mix with the egg and breadcrumbs. Mix it all into an even dough and slightly mash so that the beans break a little. That will help the balls to stick better together. Add more breadcrumbs if the mix isn't firm enough.

Shape balls from the dough and place them on a baking tray lined with baking paper.

Bake at 200C for about 30-40 minutes until the surface is crispy.

Enjoy with a nice dip and maybe a salad. I had an olive and roasted pepper salad and my Redcurrant and chilli jam with these, and it was quite a nice combination. 

Your VegHog

Crushed potatoes with olives

Here come my new favourites! I have been planning to make crushed (or smashed) potatoes for a long time now. First I started looking around the internet how people usually make them, but I wasn't fully satisfied with the methods I saw. I wanted to make fully roasted crushed potatoes and combine them with olives. So here's the recipe that I came up with, and the potatoes basically make themselves, that's how easy it is. Maybe it could be the potato side dish to your weekend meals?

Ingredients

500 g small potatoes

100 g green olives

Olive oil

Sea salt

Paprika

Wild rosemary

Garlic infused olive oil

Method

Brush washed but unpeeled small potatoes with olive oil and sprinkle sea salt on the top and roast them at 180C for about 30 minutes. Turn them in between, or shake the roasting tin around.

After this time the potatoes should be almost cooked. Roast for longer, if they are not at all soft yet. When they are softish, so not fully baked, crush them with a fork.

Then sprinkle paprika and wild rosemary on the top, and add more salt and olive oil if needed. I added some garlic infused olive oil at this stage. Also put the olives into the roasting tin and roast for further 30 minutes.

It can well be enjoyed as a stand-alone dish, but is also good to be combined with Sunday veggie roasts and such.

Have you tried crushed potatoes before, and what do you think about my version?

Have a nice weekend all!

Your VegHog

Pepper nuggets

This week I have been determined not to go food shopping yet, and just cook with the stuff I have in the fridge and my cupboards. My dry cupboard is quite well equipped, but I thought it's better to use these things more rather than to have the cupboards full. I also have some fresh veg and of those I wanted to use the romano peppers first.

I sometimes use this brainstorming approach to cooking and just dig a bit around in my kitchen to check what I have and what I could use. I'm still indecisive about today's dish, but yesterday I created rather successfully some pepper nuggets.

Most ingredients in this recipe are interchangeable, so this is a perfect dish to get creative with. The aim is only to get a dough firm enough in order to be able to create the nugget shapes. I chose baking instead of frying as the shapes can be maintained more easily and they are less fatty.

If you got curious, read the simple instructions to make no-nonsense vegetarian nuggets.

Recipe for about 10 nuggets.

Ingredients

2 pointy yellow romano peppers

3 tbsp soy flakes

1 tbsp soy sauce

1 shallot

2 garlic cloves

1 cup grated Cheddar

1 egg

1 cup semolina

1 tsp Herbes de Provence

Sprinkle of salt

Sprinkle of ground black pepper

Method

Grate the pepper and Cheddar with a cheese grater and chop the shallot and garlic finely.

Let the soy flakes moisten for a few minutes. The pepper should be moist enough to moisten the soy flakes, but also add some soy sauce on the flakes.

Simply mix all ingredients in a bowl. Add the semolina little by little to get the right texture.

Shape nuggets from the dough. I chose the triangle shape for mine.

Bake the nuggets on baking paper at 200C for about 30 minutes until the surface is crispy and browned.

Enjoy with a nice dip. I had again spicy tomato chutney powered by Jack Ratt cider.

That was all, so easy!

Your VegHog

Crusted baked heirloom tomatoes

I found these lovely heirloom tomatoes at the food market and planned a spontaneous dish with them. These crusted baked heirloom tomatoes are a great starter or side to any dinner and quick to make. The dish also has that summer feel to it. Have a read how easy it is.

Ingredients

3 heirloom tomatoes

1 tbsp basil infused olive oil

1 garlic clove

1 tbsp breadcrumbs

1 tbsp grated vegetarian pasta cheese

1 tsp oregano

¼ tsp chilli flakes

¼ tsp ground black pepper

½ tsp sea salt

Method

Cut the tomatoes in halves, place them in an oven dish and drizzle basil infused olive oil on the top.

Chop the garlic finely and grate the cheese. Mix these with the rest of the ingredients and sprinkle on the top of the tomatoes.

Bake the tomatoes at 180C for about 30 minutes until the crust is crispy and the tomatoes are baked to a succulent state.

Serve the tomatoes on top of pasta, with crusty bread, as canapés or on the side of veggie burgers. They would compliment many things, so just get creative.

Your VegHog